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$1.00 PLUS 6¢ GST
{$1.10 plus 7¢ GST
outside of the Terrace area)

VOL. Ue NO. 21

terracesta idard.com'> _

"7

By SARAH A: ZIMMERMAN Co

-SKEENA MLA Robin Austin says northwesterners
are getting the short end of the stick in the B.C. Utili-

_ ties Commission’s (BCUC) decision to allow Pacific -
Northern Gas to dramatically increase its rates for a

delivering gas to customers here.

After more than eight months of negotiations: be- .

tween PNG and intervenors such as Austin who op-

posed the rate hike, the BCUC has decided to,allow.

PNG to increase its delivery rates by more than 20
per cent.

_ Gas utilities such as PNG have no control over
the cost of natural gas and do not mark up the cost of

the product, but they make their money from charg-

ing customers for delivering the commodity.
PNG had filed a request to increase its delivery

charge from the October 2005 rate of $5.79 per -

. Gigajoule to $7. 47 per Gigajoule. That i increase was
- . 5 fo ;
Dignity, §
humour |

in their
work ©

By SARAH ARTIS |

AT 9 A.M. on:aecent.sun-.. +
ny Thursday morning; three
friends gather near Terrace’s . ]
train tracks around what they
call home — a low square-
shaped “cement _ structure,
mostly buried in the ground,
its wooden cover in pieces at
its bottom.

“A moldy mattress, where
the men sometimes sleep,
lies in the bushes a few me-

tres away.

“For our mothers and.
forefathers,” says one of the |
friends, Roy, as he raises
a capful of sherry into the;"

‘air and splashes it on the
ground.

Roy and his two com-
panions — Huey and Harry
—are celebrating after a hard
night of work, a daily morn-
ing ritual.

“Ft stops the shakes,’
explains.

‘The night . before, just
like every night of the week, |
starting at 3:30 in the morn-
ing, they scavenged the
streets of Terrace with shop-
ping carts, jumping in and
out of garbage dumpsters, in

*Roy

ay

put into place on an interim basis Jan. 1, 2006 pend-
ing the outcome of the hearings.

,. The final rate approved by PNG is $7.01 a Giga- _
joule, which is a 21 per cent increase in the delivery

charge.
- The.closure of Methanex’ s methanol plant in, Kit-
imat, which used natural gas to make that product,

was given as the reason because, it was PNG’ s larg-

est customer. .

AAS essentially given PNG everything its asked a.
, for ‘which means that the shareholders have been
protected from the shortfall in revenue by losing
.Methanex and the ratepayers have to be the ones to

pick up the difference,” says Austin, who spearhead-
ed a petition containing thousands of ndmes from the

northwest opposing the rate hike.

““T don’t believe it’s fair at all, { think at the very
least they could have split the difference between the >
shareholders and the ratepayers.”

. Austin argues the rate hike will af fect those who
can least afford it.

“T also think, by. the way, that’ this i is not in ‘the ,
best interest of PNG in the long run either, because:
-there have been a lot-of people coming: into my of- _

fice who will not pay these prices and they will just

’ go back to buming wood and, for some people, they

will just make the capital investment of a pellet stoye
or a pellet furnace — including me,” he says.
Through the negotiations PNG. was asked to make

several amendments to its projected revenue losses

for 2006 in the wake of the Methanex departure. _

“The commission decided that our cost of service
with a revenue deficiency of $4.1 million was the
appropriate cost.of service and there was no justifi-
cation for allocating any of the revenue deficiency
to our shareholders,” says PNG official Craig Dono-
hue.

Originally estimated at $4. 104 million, that num- -

" Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Jigher n atural gas costa approved |

ber has now shrunk to about: $4.01 million, says
Donohue.

- “The commission would have had to have broken
new ground for them to say the rates are too high:
‘just because,’”. Donohue says, adding that would
have meant shareholders subsidizing. customers.’ ad
_ Because the’ interim rates approved in ‘January’
were based on the original estimate of $4.1 million

- in revenue losses, customers can expect to see a 39
-cent reduction in the delivery: portion of their this |

fall with the new price being $7.01 ‘per Gigajoule,

‘Donohue said.”
The rebate is retroactive to Jan: 1, 2006 and cus- -

tomers should see the adjustment on their October
bill. It will add up to about $18 ‘per average house-
hold.

"The new rates now Ww approved will mean an aver-
age residential heating bill this year, of f approximat-
tely $1, 260.

DEWEY, Roy, Harry and Huey hang out at the place they call “home, “ near the Terrace train tracks on a sunny Thursday morning. All four men are e local “binners.” They
make their incomes by collecting empties and recyclables from about 3:30 a.m. to’ ‘8:30 a.m. almost every night, and returning them to the Terrace Return-It Centre and

~ the Skeena Liquor store in the mornings.

SARAH ARTIS PHOTO:

search of bottles and cans.
Pooling their money, the
three “binners” have made

to $70 a day, Hucy says. .
“A lot of people call, us

Harry “Belafonte” . is says Harry.

missing most of his teeth but

He got divorced sO he

Stare at the walls. or at each
Other.”

of Okanagan Valley 35 sher-
~ry - how much depends on

“TE they eat, it’s at t the Sal-
vation Army, the soup kitch->

about $30 — enough for four
bottles of sherry,
' The saying “one person’s
junk is another's treasure”
couldn't be more true here.
The men’s main’ source
of income is collecting and
returning recyclables. others
litter or throw away, or find-
ing and selling goods such
as old shoes in the trash.
Sometimes they make up

‘

By DUSTIN QUEZADA

the three stooges,” Roy says,
“But we have our own nick-
names.’

Roy “Orbison” has a scab
on the bridge of his nose
and a scar that runs the cen-
tre of his stomach, from his
chest to his bellybutton. The
gnarly; purple line is from

when he was stabbed during.

the night while sleeping out-
side.a few years ago.

City readi

TAXPAYERS SHOULD get an idea of the price tag for the
city’s latest attempt to build a second sheet of ice as early as

next week.

City council is expecting : an early September report into

the results of breaking the project down into small contracts

as opposed to seeking one company to build it all. .
If council likes what it sees, construction could begin as
early as the end of September, says city leisure services di-

rector Ross Milnthorp.

The city’s new consultant for the project is confident the
new price will be about half of the $13 million price tag it
faced this spring when it sought one large company.

That $13 million figure includes the actual construction

he never stops grinning.
And “Baby Huey” —. as
in Huey, Dewey and Louie
— holds himself’a step back
from the others’ but stays

close enough that he remains -

part of the group.

‘Harry and Huey, a log-
ger and carpenter: by trade,
both own homes in New Ai-
yansh. -

“But there’ s no work,”

Ss new ice

cost of $10.54 million, a $1 million contingency fund and

moved here.

Huey and Roy have simi-
lar. stories of wives gone.

Huey couldn’t work any-
more after his wife left two
years ago, so he also moved
here, he says.

-Roy has an apartment in
Terrace, where the group
sometimes stays.

But Roy says, “There’s
nothing to do at home except

roughly $1.4 million that would have been spent on parking

Jot paving and architectural, engineering and project man-

agement fees.

“I’m not ready to give numbers but we’re in the ballpark,”
said Wayne Aussem of North American Ice, the city’s new

consultant.

Roughly 40 packages were sent out to contractors who
have enquired and those that have made bids, including i in-

dividual trades.

Aussem said between § six and eight local contr actors are

_on that longer list.
“I’m happy with the interest shown by locals,” Aussem

said. “I think we’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results of

the bidding.”

So they spend most of

their days here at the tracks, -

and then wander. the streets
at night collecting bottles.

Almost every day like

clockwork, they return their
findings to the bottle Return-

It Centre behind the Terrace .

Inn at 8:30 am.. and the
Skeena liquor store at 9 a.m.

The latter is also where
they Puy their day’ s supply

rink c

One of the ways Aussem proposed to: shave money off

their earnings from the night
before.

The men are now used to’. oa
"to get ‘stuck in dumpsters
and. ‘scream . for help until

hard. times on the street, they
say. .
They sleep outside, even

during ‘the winter, finding —
not-so--

anonymous and
anonymous -covered areas
around town like a small.

‘shack behind the downtown _

Tim Hortons.

Os

the cost was to divide the project into components. -

For instance, both the refrigeration and steel building and
sheeting components are being considered by three to four’.
companies respectively in B.C. and Alberta — none of them |

local.

Last week, Aussem said just how many components the
project would be divided into has yet to be determined. |

He says based on bids, certain contractors may-be able to
take on multiple components of the build instead of dividing
them between different contractors if the Price is lower.

“We won ‘t know until all the bids are in to see what the

best value is,” Aussem said.

\

Cont’d Page A2

\

-en or the Kermode Friend-"
‘ship Centre.

“It’s not. unusual for them

someone arrives.”
The . worst’ “though, ‘they
Say, are the groups of young
men who harass them. and
sometimes beat them’up in
the middle of the night. y

a

- Cont'd Page AZ”.

ur

cen eee Ree